‘I was nearly collapsing with heat exhaustion when I finally found shade. Ahead of me was what had been described to me as the gateway between the worlds — two dark cliffs between which a river of golden sand seemed to flow. The air was very still. Very heavy. Very hot. I felt as though I was waiting for something to happen.
‘I waited. The desert waited. The sky waited.
‘And then suddenly a light breeze sprang up and the loose sand around me began to stir.
‘Then it was still again. The silence seemed even more oppressive than it had been before.
‘After a long while I heard a strange and distant sound. A kind of howling and roaring, faint at first, but growing stronger and more fearsome every second. I stood up, alert, startled, staring at the gap in the mountains from behind which the
